: I am nearing the end of stripping the deck of my Guillemot and have
: spent a little time building another paddle. It looks a bit like
: a GP but I'm sure the purists will tell me differently. It is
: 84" long almost 4" wide blades, and a 22" loom,
: although it has no shoulders so this is a notional length. It is
: a composite, mainly WRC with some ash and walnut accents and a
: walnut crescent tip to each blade, all glued with Titebond
: 111,the finished weight is 40oz, although I could probably do a
: little more blade thinning to reduce this. My only other paddles
: were euro style, which were varnished over epoxy. What do people
: suggest I should use as a finish on this one, and is the weight
: OK? I have spar varnish and can buy tung oil localy.
: The reason I don't think it is truly a GP is because it has one
: curved face and a one flat on each blade. What does that make
: it?
: I enjoyed the build and spent some time thinking! (Never a good
: sign!) Given the narrow and relatively small blade area, I can
: see the big attraction for all day touring, as perhaps the
: original GPs were used, since the pressure the blades can exert
: back into your shoulders must be relatively low. Surely it must
: therefore follow that it's outright power and efficiency it can
: never be as high as a well made euro or similar blade. If this
: were not the case, we might see GPs being used in sprint sports,
: which in my experience, isn't the case.

Ok, I'll take a stab at this, probably will be people yelling, oh well ;)

There really isn't a fixed design for a GP, the "standard" GP has a convex diamond shape on each side, but not all of them were this shape, some had hard shoulders some had soft shoulders and some had none at all. Width of the blade is generally a width that you can easily grab over the entire length of the blade, so that is whatever is the spread of your hand, which obviously varies from one person to the next. My GP's are diamond shaped on one side and rounded on the other and mine is wide for a GP at around 3 3/4". Mine also has what I call canoe paddle shaped blades, which have slight S curves to the shape. Btw, mine is very light, blade thickness and loom size is fairly small. Swing weight means more to a GP than overall weight. The stroke is somewhat different than for most paddles, the angle of entry with the water isn't perpendicular like a euro paddle, it's canted (top edge of the paddle is more towards the bow of the boat than the bottom of the paddle), this causes the paddle to immerse itself by itself, feels like it wants to dive into the water, you'll get used to this. The stroke is also longer exiting the water well behind you. Also has a somewhat higher cadence so the overall effect is about the same amount of drive as a euro paddle but it's much easier on the bod and should be much much quieter. Need fairly thin edges of the blade and rounded tips to make it as quiet as possible.

I'm probably forgetting something, so looking forward to other replies :)

I prefer a tung oil finish, some epoxy them, some varnish them some varnish over epoxy. I like the feel of only tung oil and yes it needs recoated usually a couple times a season, takes maybe 15 minutes to do that, though it takes time to dry.

Bill H.